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University of the State of New York 


Address 


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IN MEMORY OF 


Chancellor GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

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1824-1892 


Delivered by Regent Charles E. Fitch 

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AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 


REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY, SENATE CHAMBER, 14 DECEMBER 1892 


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ALBANY 

UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

1892 



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GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
Born 24 February 1824 Died 31 August 1892 

Elected Regent of the University , 12 April 1864 
Elected Vice-Chancellor , 14 January 1886 
Elected Chancellor , 30 January 1890 

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GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

We meet, this evening, to pay respect to the memory of 
two of our distinguished dead, but as there are days in 
June which seem to enfold themselves in the splendor and 
to exhale the perfume of all the summer time, so this is an 
occasion that revives the sentiments and quickens the 
emotions of other occasions of kindred import, the one 
including and interpreting the rest. Its peculiar sadness is 
invested with comprehensive significance. Membership in 
this board is the constant monition of our common mortal- 
ity. Of those who participated in its councils, 20 years 
ago, not one survives. Frequent have been our memorial 
services, and one voice especially has declared our frequent 
sorrow. It was a voice of surpassing richness and exquisite 
melody. No dissonance disturbed its harmony; no false 
inflection debased its golden cadence. In tone, in compass, 
in expression, it was music’s self ; and nowhere did it vibrate 
to a more rhythmic chord, nor thrill to a tenderer strain than 
here, where attuned by affection, sensitive to their virtues, 
tolerant of their infirmities and mindful of their labors, it 
sang the requiem for our departed ones. And that voice has 
ceased. There is a void we can not fill. 

When some beloved voice, that was to you 
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly, 

And silence against which you dare not cry, 

Aches round you like a strong disease and new — 

What hope? What help? What music will undo 
That silence to your sense ? 

Reverently and modestly, I trust, do I break that silence, 
at your behest, for I know that my speech is inadequate to 
his desert. Speech, however, is made the easier for me, if 

R171111-D92-2000 


4 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

I but echo that of others. I can simply join in the accord- 
ant tribute to his excellence by his fellow-journalists, by his 
companions in the guild of letters, by his co-workers in the 
causes of education and reform, all testifying to the light 
and beauty and fragrance, the strength and sincerity and 
symmetry of his life. That life is singularly open to the 
review, as it was singularly free and limpid in its flow. It 
sought no hidden recesses, nor tortuous ways. Its current 
was as full and forceful, as it was sparkling and fascinating. 
I know no life which was more transparent. The purer the 
spring, the less subtle is its analysis. It was not that this life 
was without its reserves, its reticencies and its dignities, but 
its purpose and its tenor are luminous in the revelation. 
Critics may vary in their estimates of the literary genius of 
George William Curtis — its quality and its permanence — 
and scribes may question the wisdom of some of his politi- 
cal judgments, but none who knew him will differ as to the 
integrity of his motives, his fidelity to his convictions, or 
the chivalry, compact of courtesy and courage, with which 
he upheld them. His manhood is serene against assault. 
Take from him his winning personality, the amenities that 
emanated from him, the refinements he cultivated, the asso- 
ciations and endearments that threw an ideal charm about his 
career, and there remains an inherent manhood, consistent 
in its growth, developing noble and yet nobler proportions, 
until, in its rounded completeness, it stands as one of the 
comeliest and most commanding figures of its epoch. With 
that manhood as our central thought, let us note something 
of the processes of its evolution. 

George William Curtis was born in Providence, R. I., 
February 24, 1824. Not less favored was he, from the first, 
by innate grace than by outward fortune. He was of the 
best Puritan lineage: his father was a prosperous merchant; 
his home was the abode of comfort and happiness. He had 
precious gifts of form, of feature, of taste, of feeling, of as- 
piration. His heart was responsive to the attractions of art 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


5 


and nature, and the honey of Hymettuswas on his lips. In 
the exuberance of youth, he seemed exotic to the New Eng- 
land air, but the roots of his being were planted deeply in and 
clung tenaciously to its rugged soil. If the efflorescence was of 
Italian skies or breathed the odors of the orient, the trunk 
was of sturdy native growth, and the ripened fruitage was 
sound to the core. He was of Massachusetts stock, but he 
was born on the ground where Roger Williams, fleeing 
from the persecution of the Massachusetts theocracy, found 
refuge in the primeval forest, made its umbrageous aisles 
vocal with his hymns of praise, and there builded a com- 
monwealth, whose corner-stone was the principle of the 
absolute separation of church and state. Upon all this 
broad continent, there is no spot more hallowed than that 
thus selected and dedicated. From none has proceeded a 
more genuine American inspiration — not from Concord 
bridge 

Where the embattled farmers stood. 

And fired the shot heard round the world, 


nor from Independence Hall where, in exultant peal, free- 
dom hailed the advent of the republic, nor from Gettys- 
burg, where the confederacy was shattered and Lincoln 
spoke. And this was the inspiration of the ingenuous boy, 
who sported by Seekonk cove or mused by the walls of 
Hope college, 60 years ago — an inspiration, which, if for a 
time inert, survived the allurements of travel, the brief 
intoxication of social success, and the bland temptations of a 
generous culture, restrained the debonair youth from 
dilettanteism, and resolved the litterateur into the patriot, 
so that, at the last, he might say, with Lowell, 


I sank too deep in the soft-stuffed repose, 

That hears but rumors of earth’s wrongs and woes: 
Too well these Capuas could my muscles waste. 
Not void of toils, but toils of choice and taste. 
These still had kept me could I but have quelled 
The Puritan drop that in my veins rebelled. 


6 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


Curtis was not what is known as a college-bred man, but his 
education, pursued in a unique community of thinkers and 
theorists, and supplemented by a course of study in a Ger- 
man university, was certainly more than equivalent to that 
which he could have obtained from the narrow curriculum 
of any American college of the day. His later affiliations 
with college men were close. Brown university enrolled 
him among her alumni. Several of the leading institutions 
of the higher learning conferred their honorary degrees upon 
him, and he was the favorite orator at college festivals. By 
aptitude and equipment, he belonged to the sodality of 
American scholars with which this body, in its representative 
capacity, is incorporate, and to the headship of which he 
came as naturally, as properly. His early schooling, 
glimpses of which are disclosed in his novel of Trumps , was 
at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, and then, after a year under 
a private tutor and another in a mercantile house, in New 
York, whither his parents had removed, he became, at the 
age of 1 6, a pupil at Brook Farm. 

Brook Farm, an idyl set in the prose of American life, 
almost a dim and fading legend now, was a brave, if vain 
attempt to better the social and to exalt the intellectual 
order. It tried to combine philosophy and the plow, poetry 
and the wash-tub. It was an enthusiasm, and it was “ a 
dreamer of dreams ; ” but its enthusiasm was for the pro- 
gress of the race, and its dreams were ecstacies of hope for 
the amelioration of human ills. It was communal without 
being tainted with passion ; it made work honorable ; and 
even its drudgery was conformed to the precept of quaint 
George Herbert, 

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 

Makes that and th’ action fine. 


Withal, Brook Farm had an admirable teaching force, di- 
rected by George Ripley, afterward the eminent literary 
editor of the New York Tribune , and a liberal course of 
study. There Curtis also heard the brilliant talk of Marga- 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


7 


ret Fuller and the weird conceits of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
and thither came, as frequent visitors, Theodore Parker, 
then in the first years of his aggressive ministry, the sage 
of Concord bringing pearls of thought, and the gentle hermit 
of Walden pond unfolding the secrets of the woods and 
fields. With “the plain living and high thinking” of the 
transcendentalists, Curtis received his second inspiration. 

At the age of 22 he started on a memorable pilgrimage, 
entering the old world by the gateway of the Mediter- 
ranean, landing at Marseilles, and, from there, roaming in 
leisurely fashion, for four years, through Europe and the 
East, his tour being interrupted only by a short period of 
study in Berlin. This tour, over the incidents of which I 
wish I might linger, was a delightful experience for Curtis, 
as it has been a rare source of delight to his readers, as 
drawn upon for the reveries of the Howadji and the remi- 
niscences of the Easy Chair . With ample store of classic, 
historic and romantic lore, with the taste of the artist and 
the soul of the poet, with ruddy health and cheerful spirits, 
his enjoyment was as keen as his personality was attractive, 
reminding us of that other Puritan youth, John Milton, who, 
two centuries before, had gone from the scholarly seclusion 
of his English home, to feel the rapture of Italian verse 
and view the marvels of Italian art. Everywhere, the eyes 
of Curtis caught the local coloring, and, from the galleries 
of Dresden, the Louvre and the Vatican, from 

Storied windows richly dight, 

Casting a dim religious light, 

from the majesty of Memnon and the mute mystery of the 
Sphinx, from the stormy chorus of the students in the battle- 
summer of ’48, from the typical tragedy of the Palazzo Sang- 
rido, portrayed in the Shrouded Portrait , and, from things 
new and old, grave and gay, his plastic mind received impres- 
sions that were reproduced in his works, in engaging form 
and with perfect finish. He was an accomplished traveler, 
ranking as such with Irving and Kinglake. He had con- 


8 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


genial companions in his wanderings — Kensett and Hicks, 
Hedge and Cranch and Tiffany — who were to acquire repu- 
tations in their respective walks, and he made acquaintance 
with the Brownings, Thackeray, and other celebrated authors, 
who, in turn, confessed their liking for the bright and genial 
young American, even then remarkable for his conversational 
talent. In 1850, he left Europe, which he never revisited, al- 
though two presidents, at least, tendered him high diplomatic 
appointments; and, perhaps, as Edward Cary says, this “ is 
not to be regretted, since the Europe that gleams through 40 
years of the Easy Chair is the Europe of that day, smiling, 
romantic with a touch of adventure and a charm that is as 
completely vanished as the packet ship that bore the un- 
hurried traveler to its shores.” 

Curtis returned to New York to make literature his pro- 
fession, his first regular employment in journalism being on 
the New York Tribune , to which he had already written let- 
ters from abroad. The Tribune had then been established 
about nine years, had become a vital political force, and was 
vieing with the Evening Post in literary skill. Its staff was 
a notable one, embracing several of Curtis’s old friends of the 
Brook Farm community. Charles A. Dana was the manag- 
ing editor; George Ripley was the book reviewer; Margaret 
Fuller was a welcome contributor; Bayard Taylor was al- 
ternately an editorial writer and a correspondent from “ far 
Cathay ;” and, over all, was Horace Greeley, the most orig- 
inal, the most intrepid, and the most masterful of American 
editors. Curtis was the musical and dramatic critic — for his 
pen as yet, ran mainly along esthetic lines — and he drew 
those pleasing sketches of the watering places that were sub- 
sequently collected in book form as Lotus Eating. He also 
supplied airy fancies for the Knickerbocker — a melange of 
wit and wisdom giving foretaste of the royal feasts of Har- 
per s and the Century . 

In 1851, Nile Notes appeared and was soon succeeded by 
the Howadji in Syria. The one has certain verbal redun- 
dancies and affectations, cloying upon our matured taste, 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


9 


from which the other is measurably free, but each is fine in 
temper, delicate in sentiment, elegant in scholarship and 
limns with photographic accuracy the picturesque languor 
of the ancient lands. Curtis, at the first, was enticed and 
bewildered by the opulence of his vocabulary, but he 
speedily recovered his poise, eliminated impurities from his 
style and wrought it into a diction as chaste as it is agree- 
able. “ Poetry,” says Coleridge, “ is the best words in the 
best order: ” and such is the prose poetry of George Wil- 
liam Curtis. In 1853, Putnams , the second of American 
magazines of the newer era, Harper s having preceded it by 
three years, was started, and Curtis was enlisted in its ser- 
vice. Intellectually, it was a credit to periodical literature. 
Financially, it was unfortunate, and when a crisis in its 
affairs was reached, in 1857, Curtis was a special business 
partner. His private fortune was swept away, and, in 
addition, there were obligations, which he voluntarily 
assumed, to whose discharge he devoted years of unremit- 
ting effort, applying thereto nearly all the receipts from his 
lyceum lectures. When he stepped from the platform, in 
1873, the burden had been lifted, and he was a free man. 
He never, I believe, ascended it again for pay. This is an 
interesting episode in his career, the vindication of an acute 
sense of honor, and finds its counterpart only in the 
herculean task of Sir Walter Scott in his settlement with the 
creditors of Ballantyne and Co. To Putnam s y Curtis gave 
some of his choicest work, including Homes of American 
Authors , the Potiphar Papers , and Prue and /. The 
“ homes ” are those of Emerson, Longfellow, Bancroft and 
Hawthorne, in all of which he was a familiar guest. The 
Potiphar Papers is a keen inspection of the frivolities and 
pretensions of “our best society.” Too truthful for irony, 
it is too kindly for contumely. It is the philosopher in 
dress coat, who has the entree of the circle, quizzing its 
foibles, and not the cynic in hair cloth, railing at its ex- 
clusiveness from the area. It is cleverly written and 
furnishes, in that of “ the Rev. Cream Cheese,” at least one 


IO 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


to the noted names in fiction. Prue and I is as lovely a 
bit of sentiment and lambent humor as there is in the lan- 
guage. Is the recent encomium of Laurence Hutton 
excessive ? He says: “ It is Addison with a warmth and 
humanness that Addison never knew. It is Lamb, with a 
grace and delicacy that Lamb’s time did not bequeath to 
him. It is Sidney, with the lightest modern touch, and a 
new learned simplicity. It is the sweetest, gentlest, 
serenest, loftiest, most cultured of scholars, who, in the 
homely guise of this modest clerk, enchants the reader with 
his airy fancy and rich imagination.” 

In October 1853, Curtis first wrote for the Easy Chair , 
and from April 1854 it bore the sole stamp of his individ- 
uality. In 1863 he was installed as editor of Harpers 
Weekly , and, in these connections, he remained until his 
death. He was also the “ Lounger” of the Weekly and 
made “ Manners upon the road,” for the Bazar , but upon 
the first two he expended his main force, and upon the con- 
duct of these departments his reputation largely rests. 
How dissimilar and yet how similar they are. Both are 
grounded in principle, both are conformed to exalted ideals, 
both are drawn from the “ well of English undefiled but 
the one is simple, concise, unembellished ; the other is 
buoyant and supple, and upon it jewels glitter. The one is 
robust, the other polished. The one contends in the dust 
o£ the arena ; the other rambles in the forest of Arden or 
meditates in the groves of Academus. The advocate is in 
the one, the scholar is in the other, and the gentleman is in 
both. Curtis’s weekly articles, models of a perspicuous 
style, were able, candid and dispassionate in their treatment 
of public questions, were widely quoted, and were cogent 
in their influence upon public opinion, more cogent than 
the utterances of any other American editor, with the ex- 
ception of Greeley. The Easy Chair is one of the fairest 
products of modern literature, and, in saying this, I believe 
I am not betrayed by the partiality of my love, for I am 
sure it will stand the severest critical tests. How pure ? 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


II 


how fresh, how exhilerating it is ! To how many hearts has 
it appealed as “ guide, philosopher and friend !” How va- 
ried its themes, how catholic its vision, how radiant its 
spirit ! It is the consummate flower of expression. I am 
firm in the faith that the Easy Chair will be a classic, 
grouped with the Spectator which, in the gentleness that 
informs it, it so much resembles, although, as I think, it is 
superior to the Spectator in rhetorical art. Well does the 
magazine leave vacant the place it occupied so long. To 
this king there can be no successor. 

Curtis had a voice, as well as a pen. Its opportunity was 
in the golden age of the lyceum : its superb announcement 
was in the crucial period of American nationality. Of the 
lyceum, in whose galaxy shone such lights as Starr King, 
Henry Ward Beecher, Bayard Taylor, Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edwin H. Chapin, Alonzo 
Potter, John B. Gough and Wendell Phillips, Curtis soon 
became “a bright, particular star.” Judging by the fre- 
quency of his appearance, he was the most popular of the 
peripatetic host, particularly so with cultivated audiences. 
In the flush of his early manhood, his presence was especially 
attractive. His subjects, at the beginning were of an esthetic 
or social cast. His first lecture, in 1851, was on “ Contem- 
porary art in Europe.” The Howadji had taken to the plat- 
form. Another was on “ Gold and Glitter in America,” a 
reflection from the Potiphar Papers . There was another, 
that on “ Sir Philip Sidney,” which still rings like a melo- 
dious measure in many memories, and which also to many 
seems as introspective as descriptive, obeying in its com- 
position the injunction of Sidney’s muse, “ Look in thy heart 
and write ; ” for who can doubt that Curtis was as knightly 
a soul as Sidney, and that, even in his extremity, he would 
have passed the cup to one whose need he thought was 
greater than his own? As an illustration of the hold that this 
prose threnody had on public esteem, it may be mentioned 
that, so late as last March, Curtis was asked to deliver it in 


12 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


Tacoma, the invitation coming from a man who remembered 
it as a boy. 

But soon his themes were more significant of the time, 
and his discourse ran in deeper and broader channels. 
The gravest issues of national honor and human freedom 
were at stake. The conscience of the north, so long dor- 
mant, had become active. Thought was elastic and speech 
was earnest. The Puritan spark in Curtis was fanned into 
flame, and glowed and blazed and burned within him. The 
inspiration asserted itself. He could not be insensible to 
the obligations of educated men to the state ; thereafter he 
constantly insisted upon their sanctity, and none of his 
addresses were more fervent, more eloquent or more hope- 
ful than when he elaborated this theme, as at Brown, Union 
and Lehigh. At the first, he identified himself with the 
abolitionists, from whom, if he had been observant only 
of social distinctions, he would have been repelled. Let 
me not be misapprehended in what I say of the social status 
of the abolitionists. Some were fit to grace the salons of 
Versailles, or to sit in the chairs of the Sorbonne. A move- 
ment which numbered among its adherents such an erudite 
scholar as Charles Follen, such a merchant prince as Arthur 
Tappan and such a finished Christian gentleman as Gerrit 
Smith could not be destitute of refining elements ; but it 
also comprehended a rougher element — men with more of 
ardor than urbanity, of zeal than learning, of muscle than 
manners. Aggression was the essence of abolitionism ; agi- 
tation was its agency ; but it was educating a nation. For 
it Whittier was singing, Phillips was forging his thunder- 
bolts, Lowell was applying the caustic of his wit to the hide- 
ous sore in the body politic, and Curtis was stirred to the 
impulse of speech, as the Puritan Samuel Adams was so 
stirred to declare, from the commencement stage at Har- 
vard, that resistance to the crown is lawful if the common- 
wealth cannot otherwise be preserved, and as the Cavalier 
Richard Henry Lee was so stirred to proclaim from the 
floor of the continental congress, that the colonies would 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


13 


trust to the sword against the edicts of the king ; and thus 
yielding to his impulse, Curtis became, as another has said, 
our Puritan Cavalier. 

He acted for a time with the abolitionists, but he soon 
saw that the ultimate object of the new republican party 
was the extinction of slavery, to be accomplished by consti- 
tutional means, and he joined that organization, marching 
in the vanguard of its column, with Sumner and Wilson, 
with Wade and Giddings. He took the stump for Fremont, 
and made many speeches in the memorable initial campaign 
for republicanism, and by i860, he had become a recognized 
republican leader, without, however, seeking or desiring 
political preferment, although he once accepted a nomina- 
tion for congress in a district hopelessly democratic. He 
did not hesitate to identify himself with practical party 
management. “ Honestus ” did not shrink from the caucus, 
and the caucus honored “ Honestus.” For 25 years he was 
chairman of the republican committee of his county, was 
frequently a delegate to state conventions, several times 
the chairman thereof, and from i860 to 1884, was a delegate 
to nearly every national convention of his party. 

Meanwhile, his lyceum themes were pertinent to the hour, 
and his speech grew bolder, taking form and substance from 
the troublous times in which it was cast. In 1856, it was 
on “The duty of American scholars to politics and the 
times.” In 1857, it was on “Patriotism.” In that year also, 
it was on “ Fair play for Women,” the forerunner of his 
magnificent plea for female suffrage in the New York con- 
stitutional convention of 1867 which, for breadth of histori- 
cal reference, weight of reasoning, and felicity of diction, is 
unsurpassed among the many persuasive arguments in be- 
half of that reform, not excepting that of Wendell Phillips 
at Worcester in 1851. In 1858, his speech was on “De- 
mocracy and Education.” In 1859, it was on the “Present 
aspect of the slavery question,” and this was delivered in 
“ the city of brotherly love,” amid the tumult of the mob 
and at imminent peril of personal violence ; but it was de- 


14 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


livered. With truth on his side this courtly gentleman did 
not quail before the howling of the rabble. 

When the war was on — when the tremendous issues of 
national integrity and national dissolution, of human rights 
and human bondage, were transferred from the forum of de- 
bate to the arbitrament of the sword, — the speech of Curtis 
had a sterner earnestness and a clearer ring. It even thrilled 
with the pathos of his own affliction, for his brother, a gallant 
Union soldier, fell at Fredericksburg, and two of his kins- 
men by marriage, “ curled darlings of Harvard,” but paladins 
of truth, had glorious death at the serried front, one of whom 
still has apotheosis for the supreme beauty of his sacrifice. 
Curtis talked of “ National Honor” of the “Good Fight” and, 
as the climax of his war themes, of the “Way of Peace ” — 
of peace with honor, and as embracing the fullest guarantees 
of freedom. From the lyceum, his speech broadened into 
other fields. He was heard at patriotic anniversaries and 
centennials, at college commencements, at memorial services, 
at ceremonial banquets, at political conventions, wherever 
important occasion invoked the fitting word. And he was 
generous with his transcendent gift, freely responding to 
demands upon him, until the pressure of professional duties, 
and the repose necessary to advancing years, made it incum- 
bent upon him to limit somewhat its use. 

There is no body of American speeches extant which, for 
apposite exposition of subject, for wealth of allusions — the 
side lights that are sometimes brighter than the central 
lamp — for symmetry of metaphor and relevance of simile 
and illustration, for expression grammatically, as well as 
rhetorically, correct, for method and manner, for all the re- 
quisites that combine in genuine eloquence, excels that 
which George William Curtis produced. “ He touched 
nothing that he did not adorn.” There are few events that, 
through his description, are not invested with a larger 
meaning than they had before acquired, and there are few 
men who, as depicted by him, do not tower in loftier stature 
and are not endowed with nobler disposition and more capa- 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 1$ 

cious faculties than had previously been accorded to them. 
Through him, Bryant draws closer to the heart of nature, 
and rises in the dignity of his unselfish citizenship. Through 
him, the Scottish heather blooms afresh and Scottish 
streams go more gladly gurgling to the sea, while he who 
sings of them, of “ Highland Mary,” and “ A man’s a man 
for a’ that,” becomes a bard more dear and a man more 
lovely, despite his piteous faults. Through him, Phillips is 
cast in more heroic mould, as he waits for the client who 
comes in the guise of the bruised and beaten serf, and 
brooks the ostracism of caste to become the apostle of 
humanity. Through him, the surrender of Burgoyne has 
nearer relation to that of Cornwallis, and, through him, as 
the barge bears the last soldier of Great Britain from the 
soil of New York, its oars dip to a livelier refrain of joy 
from the receding shore. Through him, the Pilgrim, 
whether he dedicates his statue in Central park or glorifies 
him at a New England dinner, leads the march of civiliza- 
tion down the centuries and across the continent — its her- 
ald and its genius. Through him, as he stands upon the 
spot where the first president of the republic took the oath 
of office, even the figure of Washington assumes a front 
more majestic and proportions more colossal than before. 
To Curtis, more than to any one else, is due the re-creation 
of George Washington, as the nation he founded, and with- 
out whom it could not have been, enters upon the second 
century of its constitutional existence. 

And it must be regarded as a happy circumstance that, 
on the anniversary of the birth of Washington, preceding 
his own death, Curtis should have been permitted to make 
his last memorial address upon a great American, himself 
born on the 22d of February, who, like Curtis, was of the 
literati and the illuminati of the land, who, like him, united 
shining talents with sterling virtues, who, like him, guarded 
an intelligent patriotism with a sturdy independence, and 
who, like him, made his art tributary to freedom, to 
democracy, and to reform. Kindred tastes, pursuits and 


1 6 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

culture had cemented between the two a friendship true and 
tender and tenacious, and Curtis never did finer work than 
when he wove the chaplet of amaranth and laurel for the 
brow of James Russell Lowell. This was the last time that 
his voice was heard upon a theme of any moment, except 
in an address which he delivered before the National civil 
service reform league, of which he was, for many years, 
the president, and to the advancement of whose objects he 
was long and consistently devoted. On this occasion, he 
was the recipient of a hearty ovation from the friends of 
that reform, and he eminently deserved it, as the most con- 
spicuous and unflinching champion of a change in the dis- 
tribution and tenure of official place, some of the features 
of which, if adopted, would certainly conserve the efficiency 
of the public service and relieve it from the evils of the 
spoils system. 

I am not here to adjust the relative position that George 
William Curtis will hold among the orators of his genera- 
tion. This would be elusive and impossible, for the 
standards of oratory are as varying as there are varying 
audiences and varying moods of audiences to determine 
them. I have, however, no doubt that his oratory will 
rank very high, as tried by the rules of the books, as well 
as by the acclaim of those to whom it was immediately 
addressed; and as for myself, I frankly say that it was the 
perfection of rhetorical and elocutionary art. It entranced 
me as a boy in the old lyceum; the spell did not depart in 
the many, many hours of rapturous listening in my mature 
years; and I felt its persuasion still, in the deliberations of 
this body, and never more than at the last. Ah ! how little 
knew we it was the last. Curtis was a great orator — one 
of the greatest orators. Less artificial than Everett, he was 
his equal in affluence of vocabulary. Less vehement than 
Beecher, he was his superior in nicety of construction. Less 
scholastic than Sumner, he was his peer in earnestness and 
excelled him in the orderly sequence of his thought. Less 
ornate and sonorous and even less magnetic than was 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


17 


Conkling, in some of his periods, he was of more uniform 
excellence, and never descended to the lower levels. He 
had Seward’s command of classic English, but he set 
therein more of the gems of speech, corruscating as from a 
coronal. 

But why indulge in comparisons ? Better than the speech 
of Curtis was the motive that prompted it. Speech, how- A 
ever sound or brilliant, receives its chiefest strength and 
luster from the man behind it, and this the speech of Curtis 
had, in a character unsullied, and in a manhood regnant 
over the seductions of the senses and the temptations to 
moral obliquities. He may have made mistakes, but he 
never consciously deflected from the right, nor contracted 
his ideals. He was honest in every throb of his heart and 
every fiber of his being, and we say this, unhesitatingly, who 
have most cause for grief over his later political course — 
we who had trusted him, had accepted his creed, had sus- 
tained his policies ; 

We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live and to die! 

We say that our lost leader did not wantonly desert us, that 
not 

Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat. 

No mean nor sordid motive, no self-seeking actuated him. 
The issue was a painful one to him, as it was to us, between 
what appeared an inexorable duty and the ties of dear and 
old association. He referred the case for decision to the 
court of conscience, and from that august tribunal there was 
no appeal. With him, we accepted the decision, not tra- 
versing its authority, although keenly regretting its adverse 
consequences. The suggestion has been made that his 
course was dictated by the revenge of his employers, based 
on the loss of pecuniary profits. It is a suggestion as cruel 
in intent as false in fact. I know, as others know, how 
3 


1 8 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

honorable were the relations of Curtis and the firm which, 
for 40 years, were his publishers. That firm never asked of 
him any thing which, if granted, would have militated against 
his self-respect. He was free to support or to oppose men 
and measures, as every editor worthy of the name should 
be. The counting room of the Harpers never assumed con- 
trol of the sanctum. Curtis has more than once told me of 
the independent position he occupied, not less from their 
desire than from his own conception of editorial functions. 
Sometimes it occurred that, after an issue was ended, they 
said to him that they had not quite agreed with his views, 
but that he was master of the situation, and they would 
never think of interfering with his conduct of the paper; and 
it were an impertinence to intimate that a man of Curtis’s 
sense of the proprieties and self-respect would have remained 
for a moment in the service of those who claimed to pre- 
scribe or regulate his utterances. As editor, his was the 
sole and unchallenged responsibility. 

When all has been said that can be said of the literary 
and oratorical eminence of George William Curtis, it is, 
after all, his character that rises superior even to this, and 
constrains the fullest measure of our admiration. It is true, 
indeed, that 

Spirits are not finely touched, 

But to fine issues, 

and that his time did much to educate and to invigorate him ; 
but, at any time and under any circumstances, his character 
would have been of the finest grain, and those who knew 
him well knew how fine it was, in its private not less than 
its public manifestation. He held his honor as “the apple 
of his eye.” He kept his plighted word. He was scrupu- 
lous in fulfilling his obligations. He was affable without 
affectation, and delicately considerate of the feelings of 
others. No one was ever oppressed by his condescension, 
nor felt the sting of his unjust rebuke. He was never petu- 
lant under provocation, and never lost a becoming deport- 
ment. He did not carry his heart upon his sleeve, nor 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


19 


bestow his confidences promiscuously, but his trust was 
given where it was deserved, and his friends were attached 
to him as by u hooks of steel.” His home was the abode of 
a sweet domesticity. His religion was in doing, rather than 
in professing, in righteous practice, than the repetition of 
creeds. 

His charity was like the snow. 

Soft, white and silent in its fall; 

Not like the noisy winds that blow 
From shivering trees the leaves — a pall 
For flower and weed, 

Dropping below. 

No one in the spirit that imbued him and the courtesies 
he illustrated better deserved “the grand old name of 
gentleman.” 

In the ripeness of his years and the fullness of his fame, 
he was made chancellor of the University of the State of 
New York. It was the fitting crown of his lettered life 
and it was an office which he accepted, at your hands, 
modestly, yet gratefully, with a sincere appreciation of its 
dignity and intimate knowledge of its requirements. When 
he was elected, he was the senior regent, having been 
commissioned in 1864. He sat in the chair of Jay and 
Verplanck and Kent — an illustrious succession — and had 
acted four years as vice-chancellor. He had always taken a 
lively interest in the work of the board, faithfully attending 
its annual meetings and punctually performing the commit- 
tee duty assigned him. He was for many years a member 
of the standing committee on the library, and I clearly re- 
call the zeal and industry he displayed, and the wise and 
valuable counsel he offered, while serving on the special 
committee of which the late Hon. Robert S. Hale was 
chairman, to devise plans for promoting the growth 
and extending the usefulness of the state library — plans 
which since matured and amplified, largely under his direc- 
tion, have unquestionably placed the New York library, in 
its accumulations, its management and its popularity, at the 
head of all state institutions of a similar kind. When he 


20 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


came to the chancellorship, it was with the qualifications 
of the scholar, profound sympathy with the objects of the 
board and enlarged ideas of the relations of government to 
education. He believed that the welfare, not less than the 
safety, of the state was involved therein, and that while the 
common school made ample provision for the one, this in- 
stitution with its congeries of colleges and universities, 
was the proper custodian of the other. Therefore, he 
favored all measures which gave it larger powers and he 
held that an imperial commonwealth, like New York, should 
grant its largess to the cause of higher learning. The en- 
actments which increased the efficiency of the board by con- 
ferring upon it additional responsibilities and those which 
defined the purpose of and appropriated means for carrying 
on the democratic scheme of university extension, had 
alike his earnest support and his vigorous administration. 
The stately oration, at the centennial of the university, in 
1884, is the expression of conservative respect and of 
poetic sentiment for an institution which, designed by 
Hamilton and L’Hommedieu, has resisted radical modi- 
fications of its original structure, has retained the life 
tenure of its members as against the sweeping change 
which has even revolutionized the judiciary, and which 
in our new American life suggests something of the 
reverence which broods over the Isis and the Cam. The 
address at the Convocation in 1890, is a luminous presen- 
tation of the objects and jurisdiction of the University, and 
of the progress it has made, especially in late years, and re- 
moves much of the misapprehension that had existed in the 
popular mind concerning it, showing that it is not effete be- 
cause it is venerable, and that it has been an active agent in 
making New York first in education, as she has long been first 
in trade, in commerce and in population, among the sister- 
hood of American states. From the time that Curtis took 
office, in January, 1890, his devotion to his work and his faith 
in the future of the university grew constantly. He gave to 
its development much of his thought and personal attention. 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


21 


He was in touch with all that the higher education still de- 
mands. Kindly in his relations with the subordinates in the 
office, they felt his loss as that of a personal friend. And 
to the members of the board, how considerate, how courteous, 
how unassuming he was, so ready to defer his judgment to 
that of others, so just, and yet so amiable. In that long roll 
of chancellors, which stalwart George Clinton heads, and 
which includes the names of Jay and Tompkins and Pruyn, 
none were worthier of the place than was George William 
Curtis, as none had more discriminating perception of its 
importance, nor in it did nobler service than he, during the 
brief period he was permitted to grace it. 

When one, who has been esteemed great in art, or letters, 
or statesmanship, dies, speculation busies itself as to the 
durability of his fame. Will he be forgotten, or will his be 

One of the few, the immortal names 
That were not born to die? 

And the door of the future closes the eager quest. How 
short will be the catalogue of those who have enduring re- 
cognition, although none may gainsay the tremendous pro- 
pulsions of the race. Where are the speeches that have 
been made, the songs that have been sung, the books that 
have been written ? There are echoless voids, and they are 
“ to dumb forgetfulness a prey; ” and unmindful of them, 
though may be inspired by them, the mighty processions 
sweep onward to decay: 

And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. 

Nothing can be more misleading than contemporary ver- 
dict upon literary productions. One age rejects what a 
preceding age cherishes, and one rescues from neglect that 
which the other contemns. Shakespeare and Milton had 
new birth and the dust of the dark ages was thick upon 
Horace and Virgil. The lesser dramatists of the Eliza- 
bethan era expected to live and the wits of Grub street 
thought to destroy Pope. The martyrs of to-day are the 


22 


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 


heroes of to-morrow. I expect that George William Curtis 
will live in the lines he has written, that the Easy Chair 
will be a delight to the coming generations, that Prue and I 
will be perused at the firesides of the newer time, and that 
some of his addresses will be read hereafter with the zest 
with which we read those ol Sheridan and Burke, of Henry 
and Webster; but I know that he will be immortal in the 
principles he advocated, in the reforms he advanced, in the 
work he did for education and humanity, in his gentle life, 
an example to follow, incarnate virtue to emulate. He 
lives and will live. 

He is a portion of the loveliness 

Which once he made more lovely; he doth bear 

His part, while the one spirit’s plastic stress 

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there 

All new successions to the forms they wear. 


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GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

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